Advertiser Disclosure: Many of the savings offers appearing on this site are from advertisers from which this website receives compensation for being listed here. This compensation may impact how and where products appear on this site (including, for example, the order in which they appear). These offers do not represent all deposit accounts available.

Free Quicken Online Review and Quicken 2009 Discount Coupon Codes

Published 1/13/09 (Modified 3/22/11)
By MoneyBlueBook

Quicken 2009 Discount Coupons and Promo Codes Listed Below

The editors at CNN Money recently examined and reviewed several of the top online personal finance tools - and ultimately decided to award its highest honors to four winners - Mint, Yodlee MoneyCenter, Wesabe, and Quicken Online. In the editorial review, all four personal financial management websites were highly regarded and praised for their innovative money management features that offered Internet consumers an introductory and accessible way to manage their saving, spending, and retirement portfolio online, all for free.

However, of the four highly regarded and mentioned personal finance sites, Quicken Online perhaps has the most impressive historical lineage, having been created and spun off as an online web app by Intuit, the same financial software maker that brought us the popular desktop money management tool Quicken, and ubiquitous tax preparation program Turbo Tax. While Quicken Online has been around for some time, it wasn't until recently that the financial tool was finally available online for free (previously, Quicken Online cost $2.99 per month after the end of the initial free trial period). While Intuit's bread and butter has historically been its comprehensive suite of Quicken desktop programs, it's clear the era of Internet based financial web tools is at hand. With the slow demise of print media as well as the end of newspapers, it seems the former stalwart money management tool has been forced to go online to match the emergence of new free competing tools. With the emergence of competing companies offering similar web-based money management tools for free, it's no wonder Quicken Online appears to be signaling a shift away from the paid desktop software model, and towards an ad-driven or subscription based online service.

Why Use Quicken Online's Free Service? Simple - Proven Brand Name And Guarantee Of Future Support and Upgrades

Perhaps one of the top reasons to go with Quicken Online for your money management needs is because of the Quicken brand name and the future anticipated cross compatibility with other Quicken products as well as with other Intuit programs like Turbo Tax. While Quicken Online's current plug and play compatibility with the entire software lineup of Intuit is still rudimentary, it stands to reason that as time goes by, it is a positive feature that will most definitely be offered sometime in the near future.

As interoperability rapidly advances at the speed of the Net, I eagerly anticipate the day I will be able to automatically populate my Intuit Quicken Online account with detailed tax data and deduction information from my Intuit Turbo Tax online account to better assist me with improving my all around financial planning. In fact, while complete cross compatibility among the desktop versions of Quicken and the web based Quicken Online is still being developed, shortcut features are already available for Intuit's online customers via password interoperability. Currently, if you are a Turbo Tax or any other online Intuit product customer, you can bypass the usual Quicken Online sign up process by logging in with your existing TurboTax ID and password for immediate access. The benefit of using Intuit's online products is the convenient ability to access all its services with just one account identity. Certainly when it comes to having to create new passwords and login names, the fewer the better.

In the area of troubleshooting and web assistance, Quicken Online's customer support has received high marks and lofty commendations by online commentators such as CNN Money for providing "solid customer support" to its users. As a proven brand leader in the world of personal financial products, the Quicken brand offers consumers such as myself a proven degree of quality, account security, customer service reliability, and reasonable expectation of continued technical support. These days, many new online upstarts seem to come and go, going bust as quickly as they jumped onto the scene, leaving existing customers hanging with a tool that will no longer enjoy future development support. However, it's almost a given that established and historically entrenched companies like Quicken are inevitably going to stay around for the long haul, transitioning their existing and established products onto the new medium (the Internet) rather than have to develop a new unproven product from the ground up.

Quicken Online Can Aggregate and Track All Of Your Bank, Credit Card, and Stock Broker Accounts From One Location

Quicken Online's primary feature is to allow you to track your various online financial accounts without having to manually log into each one to check your balances or transactions. As someone who has probably well over 50 bank checking accounts, high yield savings accounts, credit cards, and multiple online discount brokers, having to go around logging into each account one by one can be quite a nightmarish and arduous task. With a money management and account aggregation tool like Quicken Online, you can track your bank accounts, credit cards, investments, PayPal logins, student loans, and mortgage loans from one place. After inputting all of your various account login and password information into Quicken Online's secure and 128-bit encrypted system, the website will automatically pull and scrape the desired financial data from all of your accounts into one easy to view webpage for you to analyze with the benefit of fancy charts and graphs for budgeting and planning purposes. The data is refreshed and re-pulled every night, providing Quicken customers a continuously updated way to calculate net worth and track their financial progress.

Track and Chart Your Bank and Credit Card Transactions To Help You Budget

By pulling and consolidating all of your spending data from your bank checking and credit card accounts, Quicken Online can help you chart your ongoing expenditures and assist you in managing your money better. Quicken Online allows you to view your account invoices, transaction details, and account balances from one online source with the functionality to create charts and graphs that quickly analyze your spending and basic investing habits. On its main account page, Quicken Online calculates your cash flow and tracks whether you are living within your means on its aptly named webpage - Am I Living Within My Means? Users can also set monthly target budgets using the My Budget tab for categories they want to track and improve on.

While the system takes a little bit of additional manual tweaking to get it perfect, once the Quicken Online system has pulled all relevant financial data from your numerous accounts, it automatically sorts your various expenditures into purchase and expense categories such as groceries, dining, or utilities - complete with computer generated pie charts and graphs for visual inspection and analysis. While the Quicken Online automatic category sorting tool is compatible with over 5,000 financial institutions from banks, brokerages, to credit card issuers, it also offers you the ability to create your own custom tags, and the ability to add or rename your own categories as you see fit. Along with the category customization features, Quicken Online also takes a page from Terminator's Skynet computer (without the whole evil aspect) as it learns and adapts to the category corrections and edits that you make as well as those made by other fellow online users. The automatic learning system is touted by Quicken Online as one that improves with experience and enhances with use over time.

For the personal finance novice or beginner, the entire concept of account aggregation may seem intimidating, but Quicken Online truly simplifies and automates the process for newbies and experts alike. In fact, Quicken Online was probably designed with personal finance beginners in mind as most of the sophisticated and more complex features found in the desktop software are not available in the free online version. While the desktop versions of Quicken are much more comprehensive and effective as all-in-one inclusive money management and investment programs, Quicken Online's more of an entry-level account aggregation tool designed to help people manage their basic bills and live within their means via daily account snapshots without having to be too versed in personal finance lingo.

As a one-stop account aggregation tool, Quicken Online also provides its users the ability set up online email reminders and wireless telephone text message alerts for billing due dates and other financial reminders. Those who are always on the go and addicted to the crack berries (Blackberry or hand held personal data phone devices) will greatly benefit from the free Quicken Beam service, which allows users to view their Quicken Online account information on their wireless cellphones, Apple iPhones, or other PDA devices. Simply access your Quicken Online account summary on your smartphone or handheld device by visiting - m.quicken.com or texting BAL to 636363 to instantly view your combined online balances and transactions.

While Quicken Online is a great foray into the online personal money management realm by software maker Intuit, it's currently lacking most of the more comprehensive accounting, investing, and tax planning tools that the desktop versions of Quicken provide. As it currently stands, free Quicken Online's more for mainstream run-of-the-mill consumers who want a basic budgeting and account snapshot gadget with little need for more complex financial planning tools. Quicken Online's best suited for your average paycheck to paycheck consumer who wants to learn how to improve his or her finances without having to dive too deeply into financial geek speak.

Intuit's lineup of paid Quicken programs for desktop users on the other hand is well suited for those who desire the complex financial tools needed to help budget their expenditures and track their investments with actual tax planning analysis. Those running their own small businesses from home or those wanting to handle more complex accounting tasks like rental property income tracking will definitely find the paid desktop versions of Quicken to be much more substantive and appropriate for their needs than the user friendly but feature-lacking Quicken Online version. As Quicken Online does not support detailed investment tracking nor does it currently export financial data to Quicken desktop versions or integrate with TurboTax, users accustomed to the comprehensiveness of Quicken desktop may find Quicken Online to be somewhat insufficient to meet their growing needs. Of course, as Quicken Online continues to compete with Mint, Wesabe, and Yodlee, and as mainstream customers become more and more comfortable with online banking and used to the idea of sharing confidential financial information over the Internet, it's inevitable that the premium Quicken features will be added to the online version sometime in the future, perhaps in paid subscription form.

For small business owners and those with a significant number of investments, Quicken Online is not a complete personal finance solution at the present time - at least not yet. Currently it doesn't offer any sort of substantive investment tracking, and its reporting functions are much more limited and rudimentary than what existing Quicken Deluxe or Quicken Premier users may be accustomed to. While it remains what the future holds for the comprehensive Quicken desktop programs, at the present time the paid desktop Quicken programs currently provide the best fit for consumers desiring the most out of their financial planning tools and the best value for small business owners who want a complete business accounting platform.

Quicken 2009 Desktop Promotional Coupon Codes For $20 Off Savings

While compared to the previous Quicken 2008 version, there are few substantive changes, Quicken 2009 has slightly re-tooled its program navigational features, improved its bill payment reminders, and improved some of its help functions.

As always, the Quicken desktop version comes in different packages with the free Quicken Online version being the most basic and bare bones. The Quicken 2009 Deluxe version provides excellent financial tracking features with goal setting, investment tracking, and Turbo Tax data sharing. The 2009 Quicken Premier version is very popular and provides all of the features of Quicken Deluxe but with many more tools and charting features for analyzing your investments in greater detail. The Quicken Home Business and Quicken Rental Property Manager programs obviously appeal more to those engaged in those types of enterprises.

Those that want to buy or upgrade to Quicken 2009 desktop at the follow promotional rates may wish to consider using the following limited time Quicken coupon codes:

Disclaimer: Discover is a paid advertiser of this site. Reasonable efforts are made to maintain accurate information. See the Discover online credit card application for full terms and conditions on offers and rewards.

Hi, I am regular reader of your site and I have started following all the good suggestions that you have provided. I registered for quicken online and I was blown away ! Thanks for all the tips and suggestions.

-Hendry

Chelsea says:January 19, 2009 at 1:32 pm

Hi Raymond,

Wow, great in-depth review of Quicken Online. Thanks! @Hendry, I'm glad you were able to use Quicken Online after reading Raymond's review, and found it useful.

Quicken Online went 100% free in October 2008. Unlike Quicken desktop software, Quicken Online is geared toward basic personal finance tasks. So while Quicken Online is the only Web-based Quicken offering at this time, Intuit does have a history of offering Web products, like TurboTax (you mentioned above) and QuickBooks. We've got millions of Quicken desktop fans though and we're not moving away from that tradition because of our Web-based offering.

Raymond, thanks again for the in-depth review. I think you're the first blogger I've see really dig down like this.

- Chelsea, Quicken Online

chuck stiller says:January 20, 2009 at 12:48 am

Really do not much about quicken.
I love using manageME and totally addicted to it.
Also I can manage my expenses anywhere,anytime while travelling.
I have also bookmarked it's upcoming enhanced version manageME7

David says:January 28, 2009 at 10:38 pm

I disagree with the author regarding Quicken Online's "solid customer support". Support is awful in my opinion. There is no one monitoring the forums who will answer the hundreds of outstanding questions. There is no phone support. It's a program full of bugs. I've been wrestling with it for the last 4 days hoping that it would work for me. No luck.

VK says:January 31, 2009 at 7:05 pm

Agreed, Quicken Online had some promise a year ago, but has lapsed since the last "update" rolled out about two months ago that stripped most of the core functionality out of the product. My advice: download the transaction information and bail on the product...it's kind of depressing how quickly it went from head of the pack to last place compared to the competition.

Oh, and the customer support? Laughably bad...I think the primary reason it went free was to stop the constant "this product isn't even worth the $3/month i pay for it" threads on quickencommunity.com

I'm bitterly disappointed, because 6 months ago I logged into QO every day and found it to be a great tool. Now if I remember I check it once a month and download transactions out of it.

JD says:February 15, 2009 at 1:26 pm

After reading your Quicken 2009 Review, I checked out free Quicken Online and also purchased a copy of Quicken 2009 to see what the fuss was about. I like it! Free Quicken is indeed free for users and like you, I definitely anticipate further integration in the future with other Intuit software maker's other products like desktop Quicken and TurboTax (which I currently use to file my income tax returns).

I wish free Quicken Online currently offered me tax or financial planning features beyond just account consolidation but I guess we'll have to wait for that bonus!

I'll make sure the right people see your suggestions for tax and planning features. Quicken Online is a basic personal finance service, geared toward helping consumers master cash flow, and get a financial forecast.

- Chelsea, Quicken Online

ChuckO says:June 2, 2009 at 11:25 am

Three weeks into Quicken Online - and I'm dumping it. It is a nice thought, but riddled with issues. The worst of which is the inability to consistently get data synced with your financial institution. You may successfully get Quicken Online to link with your accounts, but then either never get transaction data or a generic "unknown" error. Their outsourced Tech Support for the product is essentially non-existent as you will get nothing more than generalized form letters back and never any resolution. Quicken recently isolated their community forum for the online product from their paid products, and based on the number of complaints and issues in the Online forum, one can take a stabbing guess as to why. Sometimes, things are free for a reason.

Thomas G. Potterfield, M.D. says:December 18, 2009 at 12:15 pm

I cannot contact Quicken. Attempts to get phone or chat contact have been met with silence. My program is down and cannot be accessed. No help from Quicken.

Disclaimer: Because rates and offers from advertisers shown on this website change frequently,
please visit referenced sites for current information.
This website may be compensated by companies mentioned through advertising, affiliate programs or otherwise.

Advertiser Disclosure: Many of the savings offers
appearing on this site are from advertisers from which this website receives compensation for being listed here.
This compensation may impact how and where products appear on this site (including, for example, the order in which they appear). These offers do not represent all deposit accounts available.

Disclaimer: Because rates and offers from advertisers shown on this website change frequently, please visit referenced sites for current
information. This website may be compensated by companies mentioned through advertising, affiliate programs or otherwise.